Inside the Star

Questions surround Bernier's former girlfriend

Tongues first wagged over Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier's
striking companion at last summer's cabinet swearing-in, and Parliament
Hill is buzzing anew with revelations she was once married to an outlaw
biker and lived with another gangster murdered during a bloody turf war
in the 1990s.

The divorced Bernier, 45, first began dating former model and aspiring actress Julie Couillard, 38, during the summer of 2007, and the pair caused a minor furor with her revealing attire at last August's cabinet ceremony. According to newspaper reports, officials in the Prime Minister's Office admonished Bernier over her choice of outfit.

A spokesperson for Bernier said the minister is no longer involved with Couillard, and another government official warned against drawing conclusions over her past associations.

But that didn't stop the opposition parties from questioning the judgment of a cabinet minister they clearly see as politically vulnerable, given recent missteps on the Afghanistan file.

According to documents, trial transcripts and newspaper archives, Couillard was romantically involved with two men with strong ties to the Hells Angels biker gang, La Presse reports.

In 1995, Quebec's elite anti-biker squad stormed the house Couillard shared with her then-boyfriend Gilles Giguère, a well-known underworld figure, in a pre-dawn raid.

After a long interrogation, she was released, later filing a complaint to the provincial police commission. She talked of her ordeal in a 1996 interview with Allô Police, a now-defunct Montreal crime tabloid.

Couillard lived with Giguère for three years beginning in 1993, until he decided to become a police informer after being arrested with a cache of machine guns and 20 kilograms of marijuana.

But Giguère was gunned down in April of 1996, before his trial could begin. Police discovered his body in a ditch east of Montreal.

The next year, Couillard began dating Stéphane Sirois, another gangland figure who would later become her husband.

Sirois was a member of the Rockers, a Hells Angels puppet club that biker experts say was responsible for taking over drug territories in and around Montreal and eliminating the Hells Angels' competitors.

Sirois later admitted to being a member of a Rockers "baseball team" – who intimidated rivals with baseball bats and smashed up bars that refused to allow the gang to deal drugs – and testified against more than a dozen of his former associates in a 2002 mega-trial.

During that testimony, Sirois contended Boucher had presented an ultimatum: he had to choose Couillard or his gang. He chose the former, but after their 1999 divorce, Sirois became a police informant, and returned to the gang as a mole.

The circumstances of how Couillard met Bernier are unclear, but the two reportedly holidayed in the Caribbean in 2007. Couillard was seen on Bernier's arm as recently as February, at a gala in Ottawa.

When reached by La Presse, Couillard declined to answer questions and hung up the phone.

The newspaper and other Quebec media outlets have been investigating Couillard's past for several weeks, and it was the subject of television and radio reports yesterday.

There is no suggestion Bernier was aware of her ties to the criminal underworld, which seemingly ended with her divorce in 1999. Neil Hrab, a spokesperson for Bernier, dismissed inquiries about the allegations. "This is a private matter," he wrote in an email.

Last month, Bernier sparked an international incident when he told reporters during a visit to Afghanistan of Canadian efforts to have the governor of Kandahar province fired from the job. The diplomatic gaffe is said to have put the brakes on the Afghan government's plans to replace Asadullah Khalid, who has been implicated in corruption, as well as the torture of battlefield detainees.

Bernier was forced to issue a statement clarifying that Canada had no business interfering in Afghanistan's political affairs.

In Ottawa, Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said he had no independent confirmation of the allegations, but what he had heard caused him concern. "Certainly, Mr. Bernier needs to explain because we want to know if there were any matter of national security involved," he told reporters.

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